Michael Joseph (1941-) - Belisha beacon, Portobello, London

Michael Joseph - Portobello Belisha Beacon, London, 1960s Original vintage black-and-white photograph • Signed and inscribed by the photographer A striking and wonderfully graphic early London photograph by Michael Joseph, capturing one of the most ordinary objects of the British streetscape and turning it into something unexpectedly beautiful. Photographed around Portobello in the 1960s, the familiar Belisha beacon becomes the commanding protagonist. Joseph isolates its unmistakable circular form against a softly dissolving London street, with cars, pedestrians and shopfronts reduced almost to abstraction behind it. What makes the photograph so successful is its apparent simplicity. This is an image that depends entirely upon seeing the composition before pressing the shutter. Joseph had to find precisely the viewpoint at which the beacon, its pole, the approaching car and the receding pavement fell into balance - while using a deliberately shallow depth of field to transform the busy street behind into atmosphere. There is no elaborate advertising set here, no enormous cast and none of the orchestrated chaos that would later characterise so much of Michael Joseph’s celebrated commercial work. Instead, we see the photographer simply walking through London and noticing something that everybody else walked past. The result feels extraordinarily modern: bold geometry, strong blacks and whites, an almost abstract division of the frame and that glowing orb suspended above the street. It is both unmistakably 1960s London and curiously timeless. As an original vintage print from Joseph’s earlier period, it also provides a fascinating glimpse of the visual instincts that would underpin his later career - the ability to take the commonplace, alter our viewpoint, and make us look twice. Hand-inscribed on the mount by Michael Joseph: “Portobello Belisha Beacon” - London 1960s and boldly signed by the photographer. A wonderfully evocative piece of London photographic history - Portobello before it became an icon, photographed by a young Michael Joseph before he did too.

Estimation:€450

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